Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his support for the overall programme. We are asking councils to pause work on progressing local government reorganisation. It will be a short pause. This means that councils should cease work on implementing previous decisions, but there are shared projects that will be useful in any potential reorganisation and of course they can be continued. We want this process to be done with good local engagement and we will listen very carefully to the views that councils provide.

As they have done throughout this process, officials will proactively engage with places and support them throughout the period. Ongoing work, for example, could include improving data quality and data sharing, mapping services, finances, workforce assets and contracts, identifying key risks and dependencies, undertaking ICT and digital discovery work, and continued engagement with partners and residents. We recognise the need to provide certainty as quickly as possible, so that areas have clarity over their future. We will work at pace on the review and report back to Parliament at the earliest opportunity.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my registered interests as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. The House understands that the Government will not publish their legal advice, but are these decisions the result of specific legal advice about the nature of the decisions that were made or of changes of mind on the part of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State? Would it not be better to start a rapid review by restating or amending the criteria against which the decisions are to be made? Would that not make the decisions, ultimately, less prone to legal challenge?

Where Cambridgeshire is concerned specifically, we were told that there would be a decision in October. Is that still the case? We were also told that that would lead to elections on new boundaries in May. Presumably that is not to be the case.

Finally, on strategic spatial planning, which I know the Minister—and I and others—supports, can she say that the lack of progress on unitaries does not mean that we cannot have progress on establishing strategic planning boards?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. The criteria will be looked at as part of this review process. It is important that we take account of the legal advice—we are not going to publish it—and look at the impact on the future programme; it would be unwise not to do so.

On the issues around Cambridge, the noble Lord asked me about elections. Let me start with the October decision-making. We had said to colleagues in Cambridge and Peterborough—and indeed in West Sussex, where decisions had not been taken—that we would endeavour to have decisions in October. Both those areas will go into the review process, so those decisions will now be announced alongside the other areas that are being reviewed. I hope that that will not lead to too much further delay in Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and West Sussex. Noble Lords will be aware that an important part of this process is the statutory instruments that have to go through both Houses. We were on a very tight timetable for all this anyway, so it is not likely that elections will be able to go ahead to the shadow authorities as planned in 2027. That is why we have said that elections will go ahead, but on the old boundaries.

On spatial planning, the devolution work can continue to look at planning and how that will work through in the devolution process.